Rev. William Barber, president of the North Carolina National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor organization, will share the stage for a discussion, “Labor and Civil Rights: Bold Legacies and New Directions.”
The event will take place at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 4, in Presidents Hall of Franklin Hall. William Morris of the Bloomington Human Rights Commission will moderate the discussion.
“Fifty years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. observed that one stage of the civil rights movement had ended and another needed to begin,” said Benjamin Robinson, co-chair of the Themester 2015 advisory committee and associate professor in Germanic studies, in an IU press release. “There could be no progress in civil rights unless the whole of American society takes a new turn toward greater economic justice.”
Barber and Trumka will explore initiatives like bringing civil rights and environmental groups into the labor federation and developing new forms of unionism organized around communities, according to the release.
“One premise guiding our signature event is that there is no better way to learn about work than with those who are organizing its future,” Robinson said in the release.
Tickets, available online, are required for the free event. The discussion will be streamed live and archived at broadcast.iu.edu.
Alyson Malinger
